


Where He Leads

by thedevilchicken



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Ghosts, M/M, Mentor/Protégé, The Force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-22
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2019-05-26 23:01:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15011309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: Dooku never wanted an apprentice.





	Where He Leads

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shanlyrical](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shanlyrical/gifts).



"There was a time when I would have followed you anywhere," Jinn says. 

He looks the same as he did the day he died, or at least that's what Dooku suspects to be the case: he was sixty years old then and he's sixty years old now, with the same old cloak, and the same worn boots, and the same expression on his face. 

But Qui-Gon Jinn is dead, and Dooku knows that better than anyone. 

Jinn is dead. And, at the point of Skywalker's sword, so is he.

\---

At sixty years old, Qui-Gon Jinn was quite the formidable Jedi Master. 

He was hardly what anyone could have called the Council's favourite, of course, but he had never set out in that direction; he was something of a nonconformist then, and he had been for at least as long as Dooku had known him. Frankly, he considered the fact that the rebellious streak so apparent in his old apprentice had utterly failed to be stamped out was one of his greatest achievements. Of course, he considered that from afar.

At fifty years old, Jinn had been no less formidable. 

He had taken on his third apprentice by that stage, a few years earlier, though following some considerable delay; Dooku understood his caution, when taking Xanatos into account. He would have counselled him but for the fact that they were distant then, and his old apprentice seemed to make more of Master Yoda's usual elliptic aphorisms than he ever had himself. He quietly wished him well, however, albeit from afar. 

At forty, Jinn was already a force to be reckoned with.

Dooku watched him with Xanatos, and once or twice he tried to caution him; he could see the kind of arrogance in his old padawan's padawan that he had sought to banish from himself. They were quite a pair, though, strong and swift and very able, and Dooku saw himself in both of them. He saw his own politics turned nobler than they'd ever been by Jinn, and twisted darker then by Xanatos. He expected the fall, and the fallout from it. Though he didn't relish it, he watched Jinn stumble, then he watched him rise again.

At thirty, Jinn was tall and broad and comfortable with the breadth of his own powers. At twenty, still under Dooku's tutelage, he was less so but clearly on his way.

At twenty, Jinn still shared his quarters, still questioned him but listened when he spoke, still valued the apprenticeship he had. He was eager and able and they worked together well, the Jedi Knight and his padawan. The Council trusted them with missions of the utmost delicacy and importance. Dooku had learned by then, however, that he could not quite trust himself despite the Council's faith; _no attachment_ was the rule, and he cautioned Jinn against it vigilantly, but he had already seen it in himself.

By the time Jinn was twenty years old, Dooku understood the nature and the depth of the attachment that his padawan felt for him. What was more: he felt it, too. He supposed it had been inevitable.

\---

He'd never wanted an apprentice.

He spent a number of years after his knighthood was confirmed without one, much to the consternation of all concerned, until Master Yoda told him he would have to take one and that there could be no argument; there were insufficient Knights to train their initiates as it was, without one of their best refusing such a standard expectation as taking a padawan. And so, given that he had no other option, he resolved to choose. 

He would like to say that choice was the result of his meticulous study, because he certainly dedicated many long, trying hours to its consideration. He remained in the Temple for weeks following Master Yoda's initia ldecree, and he observed their initiates in their daily training. He attended both practical and theoretical lessons, philosophy and politics, their lightsaber practices, and he knew the initiates had guessed why he was there. They reached and overreached in trying to impress him, sometimes excelling but more often falling short. They pushed themselves almost to the point of complete exhaustion, and all for his attentions. All except for one. 

At ten years old, Qui-Gon Jinn was not very much to look at. He was small for his age, short and scrawny and prone to being late for classes, and while he was not exactly quiet, or calm, or exceptional by any of the usual measures, Dooku found his attention drawn there as the days and weeks went by. Jinn didn't court his interest as the others clearly did. Dooku couldn't help but wonder why that was. 

One morning, shortly after dawn, before the initiates' first class of the day, Dooku followed Jinn. He trailed him from the doors of the initiates' quarters and down the long, winding Temple corridors, keeping quietly back and out of sight. He followed him into a small meditation garden, one that he had honestly never thought to visit in any of his time there, though he supposed he'd known of its existence - from what he'd heard, its establishment hadn't really taken. It lacked so much lustre, so the other Jedi said, that only the old ascetics had ever given it much thought, but they'd long since moved on to something even sparser. 

He expected a rather sad and sorry sight to greet him there behind the doors, and though the plants and trees and shrubs and flowers that he found inside were all a little wild, they were flourishing exceptionally. They were everywhere, leafy and flowering, bearing fruit, far from the thoroughly dismal affair he'd been led into expecting, and when he spotted Jinn, he understood. He found him meditating at the foot of a small but sturdy apple tree, and he could feel what he was doing in the Force. He doubted Jinn even knew it himself. 

Dooku cleared his throat. Jinn opened his eyes. 

"Master Dooku," he said, evidently surprised. "Am I late for class? I know I'm not supposed to come here." 

"Not yet," Dooku replied. "But I understand you usually are. Do you come here very often?" 

Jinn nodded. "Every day," he said. 

Dooku glanced around the garden, with its low trees that almost skimmed its relatively low ceiling, its beautiful flowers and the smell of moss and earth and sweet, ripe apples. He reached up and plucked one down, looking at it as he turned it in his hand. 

"Yes, I think you do," he said, and then he settled himself down in front of Jinn, cross-legged, right there on the grass with him. Jinn watched him openly.

"The other initiates in your class try very hard to impress me," he said. 

Jinn nodded again. "I know," he replied. "They talk about it sometimes, when we're meant to be studying. They think you're choosing your first padawan." 

Dooku spread one hand against his own knee, the apple still sitting there with its mottled green-and-red in the palm of the other. 

"And what about you?" he asked. "Wouldn't you like to be chosen?"

Jinn frowned thoughtfully and he brushed a little stray earth off his hands against the fabric of his trousers. 

"Maybe, but not like the others would," he said, once he'd consider it. "I'm not big or strong or quick or any of the things like they are, so maybe I wouldn't mind if I was never a knight. I think the Council might let me work in the gardens." He smiled faintly, not quite self-consciously. "I think I'd like that." 

Dooku looked into him with every ounce of insight that he might have had, though he suspected that he hardly needed to; that suspicion was quickly proved to be correct: Jinn was utterly sincere in every word he'd said. Dooku would like to think that was why he chose, but he's acutely aware that it wasn't. 

He took a bite of the apple in his hand as the two of them sat there, in Jinn's wildish little garden, and he found it fresh and crisp and sweet as any that he'd ever had. He knew why. _That_ was why he chose. 

"I understand," Dooku said. "And I'm afraid I must apologise." He stood again, sweeping up from the ground, and he held out one hand to Qui-Gon Jinn. After a moment, Jinn reached out and took it. Dooku helped him to his feet, though he hardly needed it.

"You will be my padawan," he told him. "But don't be concerned, Jinn. We'll come here every day. This will be our secret." 

He remembers the way his new padawan smiled then, brightly, like nothing in the galaxy could ever disappoint him because his master wouldn't take away his garden. And then they left together. 

He knows now that all he ever did was disappoint.

\---

He'd never wanted an apprentice but once Jinn was gone, all Dooku wanted was him. 

When he returned to the Temple from the mission that had been of such critical importance that it had kept him from his own padawan's funeral, the first place he went to was the archives. He studied the oldest texts, and the darkest holocrons, and he hoped, and he _hoped_ , that somewhere he would find the answer. The Council tried to order him to stop, but he ignored them. They succeeded only in making Jocasta Nu an accessory to his trespasses, as she could not deny him when she saw exactly how he grieved. 

He didn't expect that he could bring back his lost apprentice, at least not corporeally, but he wondered if perhaps he could search out a way to locate and then gather the last traces of him that lingered in the Force. He wondered if he could compel those traces to coalesce, just for a moment, into something almost like Jinn's spirit. He visited Naboo, to see the place he'd died and the place they'd burned his body, but Jinn wasn't there. He was already gone, dissipated in the Force, far away from where his foolish old master could follow. It was much too late for his apologies, however much he wished he could make them.

And so, he returned to the Temple. And so, he returned to the garden. He sat down at the foot of the apple tree, and he closed his eyes, and he clenched his fists. He'd never told Jinn why he'd chosen him, though he'd asked him more than once, because the fact was he was something very close to being ashamed of it. He felt it most acutely then, there in that place, when Jinn was gone. 

At ten years old, Jinn had been small and short and scrawny, but that had quickly changed; people said he grew like a weed to match his master, though he never did quite find the height to catch him up. He was gangly for a start, all legs and arms and the requisite amount of awkwardness to go with that, but he soon acclimatised. And, as the months passed, and the years passed, Jinn filled out to match his frame. By fifteen years old, Jinn was clearly no longer the runt of the litter. By eighteen, it was clear that the deficiencies his instructors had identified in him were deficiencies no more. By twenty, when they stood together side by side, they were a match for anyone. Even each other.

Dooku had done as he'd promised: when they were on Coruscant together, every day of every week of each month of each year, they visited the garden. They'd sat under the tree together, sometimes to talk and other times to meditate, sometimes cross-legged and other times with their backs pressed to the trunk of the tree, with their bare feet in the grass and their consciousness deep in the moment. Sometimes, Dooku ate the apples that were growing there, always growing there - they quickly became his favourite. He understood why, and was ashamed of it. 

By the time that Jinn was twenty, Dooku understood the depths of the mistake he'd made. He understood the workings of Jinn's mind by then, and the depths of the attachment to him that Jinn had formed. He understood how that had happened, in spite of all his warnings to the contrary; he understood he'd brought it on himself, each time he'd seen the look on his padawan's face and done nothing more to keep it in check, each time he'd squeezed his shoulder, each time he'd sat with him there in that garden that he'd made. He'd done nothing to stop it. 

That day, the first day that it went a step too far, Dooku was already in the garden when his padawan arrived. 

"Master?" Jinn said, as the garden door closed up behind him. 

Dooku was sitting underneath the tree, an apple in his hand that he'd yet to take a bite of, which he considered for a moment before he tucked it inside his robe. When he looked at Jinn again, he had that expression on his face, the one that he had left unchecked, and in the moment before it happened, he knew with perfect certainty that it would and he wouldn't stop it. Jinn crossed the garden and he went down on his knees there right in front of him. He cupped his master's face in both his large, rough hands. His moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue and when he leaned in to kiss him, his mouth just as sweet as an apple from the tree, Dooku didn't tell him to stop. He waited until after for that, once Jinn had pulled back. 

It was a sternly worded warning on how proximity could breed familiarity, how familiarity could breed intimacy, and intimacy could breed attachment. He'd lectured on it, once or twice, and he would go on to do so many more times in the years that followed, but he didn't feel the words he said as much as he did the depth of disappointment on his padawan's face. He felt that, too, because the attachment Jinn felt was far from unrequited. The attraction Jinn felt, that should not have been, so sharp and hot and tantalising, was far from unrequited. He pushed it down, and he let him believe it was.

Matters between them were strained for a number of weeks, but then returned to normal. Matters between them remained normal for a number of years, until after Jinn was knighted. Dooku felt the loss of his company sharply, as did Jinn; they sought each other out between their separate missions from the Council, took meals together, taught occasional seminars together, sparred together when the impulse struck, Jinn's strength against Dooku's tight defences. It was simpler to convince himself that all was well and right when Jinn's presence in his life was not quite so persistent as it had been, until that fallacy fell into tatters. 

He remembers hearing that Jinn was dead, thirty years before he really was. He remembers how bitterly he felt it, and how hotly, and with such swift immediacy. He had never felt that kind of all-consuming rage and grief and loss before, and it knocked him down, and it knocked him out quite literally. When he woke, hours later, to the fuss of his peers, he reassured them he was quite alright, and then he fled into Jinn's garden. And, along the way, he felt a strong, familiar presence in the Force: Jinn hadn't died, he was standing right there by the tree. 

"Master," Jinn said, and Dooku could see not a single indication of the crash they'd said had killed him, but his sudden instinct was that he needed to be sure. He strode over to him, over the grass, by the little artificial stream, and pushed the cloak from round his shoulders, then pulled the belt from round his waist. He stripped him down meticulously right from head to toe and Jinn permitted that, albeit with a look of genuine bewilderment. He tossed Jinn's clothes aside, piece by piece, till he was standing naked, then he looked at him. He examined him. He walked a steady circle all around him, checking his skin for lacerations, for contusions, and he found not a single blemish except for the long-healed scars he already knew the stories of. 

Then he touched him, took one wrist and examined his arm, the other, his collarbones, the length of his spine. He reached with the Force and Jinn was well, Jinn was healthy, and he was whole, and very much alive. The garden almost danced with it around them; he'd come close, that was clear in his emotions, but he'd lived. And Dooku honestly wished he could have felt relief the way he'd felt his loss, but he didn't feel relief at all. The loss was still in him, overwhelming him, to the point that it made sense to him then when he pushed Jinn back against the tree, beneath the heavy-laden branches that almost grazed their heads. It made sense when he pressed against him, his clothes on Jinn's bare skin. 

"Master..." Jinn said, lowly, perhaps inquisitive or warning or maybe consolatory, but Dooku had not the wit just then to comprehend the difference, or even the significance. He had his forehead pressed down to Jinn's bare shoulder, his palms at Jinn's bare hips, but not for long; a moment later, his mouth found Jinn's; a moment later, he kissed him, and Jinn did not push him away. He pulled him closer. 

That night, Jinn shared his quarters. That night, Jinn shared his bed. He was almost thirty years old and tall and tanned and bluff and filled with confidence, strong in the Force, and still attached, still so very attached. They took off their clothes in silence, in the half light, and Dooku couldn't help but press his mouth to Jinn's again as if to reaffirm that he was living. When they went to bed, Jinn watched him as he settled over him. When Dooku touched him, Jinn's face flushed and his eyes went wide; when Dooku slicked himself and pushed inside him, Jinn gasped then groaned obscenely. Jinn wrapped his legs round Dooku's waist and pulled him deep. They understood the basics; the rest they worked out together. 

Jinn was in the temple every day for the three weeks that followed and, as fate would have it, so was Dooku. They met in the garden every day for the three weeks that followed while Jinn's padawan found other things to occupy himself. He pressed Jinn to the apple tree and kissed him, slowly, their rough fingers in each other's hair. He eased Jinn down onto his hands and knees beneath that tree and he had him there, Jinn's nails raking at the bark. He thumbed his cock down to Jinn's hole and he rubbed against him. He pushed inside him, he moved inside him, he made them both groan as he shifted his hips. When he said his name, he never called him _Qui-Gon_ , not like all the others did; when he said his name, he always called him _Jinn_. He realised, suddenly and starkly, that what had started as a measure of their distance from each other had turned to an endearment. 

Jinn spent three weeks of days and nights with him, in his bed, or at the dining table, or in a training hall with lightsabers in their hands. He learned the taste of Jinn's warm, bare skin and he watched him sprawling, on a couch in the quarters they'd once shared, still half inside his robes. He'd smile like he was happy, like in that moment he was fulfilled. Dooku felt that, too, as his old apprentice kissed a long line down the length of his bare back, as he slicked him with his fingers, as he pushed the thick length of his cock inside. He felt it, but beneath the weight of the secret that they had to keep.

He'd started this, he knew, all those years before. He'd started it the day he'd walked into that garden and made Qui-Gon Jinn his first apprentice, though he hadn't known it at the time. He'd understood that day why Jinn had been small for his age, and scrawny, and weak: he was small because he gave so close to everything he had into that withered garden, through the Force, and made it grow, and made it flourish. Dooku had thought perhaps he could find a way to benefit from that, much to his shame, since it was clearly happening then even without his interference. He had benefited, yes, though not in quite the way he'd thought he might. 

Jinn had given himself into the garden without ever really knowing it, into the grass and the leaves and the flowers, and the apples on the tree, and to his master who'd been there beside him. Jinn had given himself and the fact of it was that what he gave away, Dooku found he couldn't help but pour back into him. He gave it back, and more, from inside himself. 

For years, for _fifty_ years, from near or far away, he'd made himself weaker just to make Jinn strong. Bafflingly, he'd never even minded for a second. He knew the attachment that they had was present in the Force as much as in the two of them.

Then, when those three weeks were up, they were given new assignments. Jinn and his apprentice went to Telos IV. Xanatos fell. And when Jinn came back, Dooku pushed him away. If he'd left the Jedi Order, Jinn would have followed him. If he'd gone home to Serenno, Jinn would have followed him. He couldn't let him, not because of what he'd done. 

He kissed Jinn's mouth that night, with Jinn's face in his hands, and he told him he was sorry. They barely ever spoke again, for thirty years. Sometimes he could almost have convinced himself that didn't matter, and Qui-Gon never knew. 

And then, when Jinn was gone, their bond was severed. Then, when Jinn was gone, every ounce of what he gave him daily flooded back to him instead. He hadn't realised just how much that had been until he felt it. He'd have given that again, and more, to bring back Qui-Gon Jinn. 

Before he left, he burned the garden down to cinders. The lightning came to him quite easily, he found, and he'd soon find other things to burn. 

\---

"There was a time when I would have followed you anywhere," Jinn says. 

In this moment, this moment between life and death, Dooku sees the truth of that. In this moment, he sees it for exactly what it is: not a sentence, not a secret, not a noose around their necks. It's the promise of something that the Order couldn't conquer. It's a regret for thirty wasted years. 

Jinn holds out his hand. Dooku doesn't hesitate; he takes it. As he stands, as he leaves his body behind, Jinn smiles. 

Perhaps now it's his turn to follow.


End file.
